


Break It To Me Gently

by leijonara



Category: Cats - Andrew Lloyd Webber
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Other, thats the whole fic really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-05
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-07-12 10:43:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7099624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leijonara/pseuds/leijonara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rumpleteazer decides that the best way to cope is to destroy everything she loves. Healthy grieving is a concept unexplored.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Break It To Me Gently

**Author's Note:**

> :3

The door is open.

You stand before it on numb paws, gaze drifting over the blanket crumpled on the ground and the gaping hole of an entrance you’re left with. The idiot must’ve pulled it down in his haste to get out. You don’t have the energy to fix it.   
It hits you hard when you step in. The den is steeped in his scent and yours, mingled together til you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. Your nest of blankets in the corner is messy as always, the stash of canned fish sits pretty by the collection of trinkets you’ve amassed with him. You tremble when you spot a tuft of fur on a cushion- too dark and ginger to be yours. Beside it sits the half eaten remains of a pigeon. Was it really only a few hours ago that he was called away from it?   
Slowly, shakily, you lower yourself into the nest, surrounding yourself with reckless memories. That fleece one came from a nanny at the park, the one with holes in it from when you spent a frustrated week inside because of storms and he decided he had nothing better to do than claw up the bedding. The biggest and softest of all laying haphazardly off to the side- your favourite, the one you curl up in together and giggle secrets under.   
You take it in your hands and finger the cloth nervously. It’s empty in here, empty and quiet and solemn and everything you’ve never been. You feel like you’re suffocating on his scent. It’s not sunk in yet, you don’t think, but how could it? You can’t believe they let you go back here instead of making you stay in Jenny’s den with the others. But even though Skimble tried to mumble comfort to you as he held tight to your hands, you pulled away and he let you slip from his grasp. Maybe he knows he can never be what you need. Fake father, fake mother, both of them watched sadly as you left.

You reach between a couple of pillows, looking for the music box you keep there. Everlasting Cat knows you could do with some cheering up. But your fingers brush against something cool and, curious, you draw it out instead.  
Oh.  
You blink, and turn to face your love.  
“There,” he purrs, gaze lowered as his fingers trail down your neck. “Just as pretty as you.”   
You laugh- all quiet like and shy as anything- and reach up to touch the pearls at your throat. Your hand meets his and you lace your fingers together, bringing them up to press a gentle kiss to his hand.  
“Thank you, love. They’re beautiful.” You smile. He pulls you closer by the hand and leans down. You meet him halfway in a kiss, letting your eyes slide shut in the warmth of his embrace.  
When you open them, you’re sitting alone again with the old string of pearls, a tightness in your throat. You tie them around your neck, desperate to recreate the memory, but the warmth is gone.   
You look down at the worn necklace and swallow thickly. A cruel trick is all it was, but you find the ache in your chest growing at the ghost of his lips on yours. You shut your eyes, squeeze them tight, feel the hot prickle of panicky tears. You try to hold it back, but a moment is all it takes before the first jerking sob forces its way up from your chest. It’s followed by another, and the horror and the emptiness and the desperate terror settle cold and hard in the pit of your stomach and you let out a howl of misery and claw the pearls from your neck. The ribbons snaps and you watch, eyes blurred with tears, as the pearls scatter on the floor. You grit your teeth and curl into yourself, the grief burning through you until it’s all you feel because he’s gone, he’s gone and he’s never ever coming back and it builds up and up and you give in and just howl and sob and scream your rage and loneliness, kicking and tearing at the home you built together. Every smash and rip and give of worthless shit beneath your claws adds to the sheer rawness of your grief because who cares if it’s gone, who cares if you lose your mind and destroy everything you love, it doesn’t matter to anyone anymore but it mattered to him and he’s gone and his life is bled away into the dust and you slump down onto the blankets and sob yourself hoarse and try to comprehend the vastness of the hole inside you.

You fall asleep like that, trembling and wretched and waiting for him to come and kiss it all better like he used to. He doesn’t. You wake up only hours later after a sleep filled with nightmares and lay there, wanting to die. You feel bitterly, bitterly cold and angry and there’s a lump of ice in your throat. The tears fall freely and silently and if you slip back into sleep in the end, you’ve no idea. It doesn’t matter. Nightmare or memory, you can’t tell them apart now and it’s better not to try.

You get up at some point, walking out into the moonlight. You glare at the moon.  
“Bitch,” you say to the Everlasting Cat. “You bloody well know it’s not his time. But you took him anyway.” Anger surges up in you, from where you don’t know, and you ball up your fists and scream, “you took him anyway! You took him from me and I needed him and he needed me! Why do you hate us? Why do you want us to suffer so much? What did we do to deserve this?”   
If there’s an answer, you don’t hear it, and the night sky remains serene as ever. You let out another wordless scream of rage and kick savagely at a nearby plank of wood. It’s big enough to hurt, and you relish the sting. “Huh? Was that good to you? You clearly get off at watching me suffer, don’t bloody deny it, so maybe I’ll just cut out my heart for you since it’s no good to me any more!” You pause, heaving for breath, energy spent. The anger pooling in your stomach is cold and hard and you feel nauseous with the need to have him back with you. It’s so incredibly cruel that you can’t have that, when the wanting of it tingles through every fibre of your being. 

A gaping and indescribable loneliness creeps through you and the anger melts into something wretched and miserable. You slump to the dirt, a low and keening wail of despair clawing its way from your lungs, and clutch at your chest as if that’ll make the pain go away.  
This is too much. You’re going to die from the vastness of your grief, this unending horror of realisation that beats against you again and again and wears away at your spirit like the ocean on stone. He’s gone, your mind whispers again and again, and your wail turns to a low moan and you just want this to end. It’s all you can think, all you can feel, and there are no words in this language that could capture how hollow you are.  
A quiet cough brings you to silence, and you turn and peer with tearblurred eyes at the cat behind you.   
“What?” you croak. “What do you want?” They step closer, out of the shadows, and you blink hard, bringing one wrist up to scrub away your tears. “You’re too late,” you add bitterly. Cruel, maybe, but you have to find someone tangible to blame. He was supposed to protect you all, he was supposed to get there first.  
Munkustrap’s ears twitch back uncomfortably, but nonetheless he crouches in front of you. For once, your Protector seems at a loss for words.  
“I’m sorry,” he says, simply. “I failed you both. I shouldn’t have sent either of you out against him, knowing your- your history.” He swallows. “Is there anything I can help with?”  
You regard him coldly. “No.”  
“Are you sure? I-”  
“I said no,” you snap, harsher this time. “Leave me alone.” The silver tabby gives a flick of the tail; you’d probably feel guilty for being rude but right now you could not care less.  
“Rumpleteazer, I don’t think you should be alone right now.”  
“Well, I am.” You turn your face away. “I don’t need you to coddle me.”  
“Your family, then.” Oh, hell no. Anger rushes through you- how dare he?

"My family? And who’s my family, exactly?” you hiss, hauling yourself to your feet and shoving yourself up towards his face. “They’re all dead. My father killed my mother, my brother killed my father and now Macavity’s killed him. Who exactly do I have left, Munkustrap?” You give him a shove, feeling a cold burst of pleasure when he stumbles back, eyes dark with surprise. “Who’s my family now?”  
“I thought you were close with Jenny and Skimbleshanks,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed.”  
“Go away,” you growl, turning away with a scoff. “You and everyone else, just leave me be.” Without waiting to hear a response, you stalk back into the destroyed den, clearing pieces of a ceramic sculpture from the bed before curling into a miserable heap of raggedy fur. You’re not really sure what to feel. In the wake of your fury is nothing, the pain numbed by exhaustion. Eventually, sleep drags you down into its dark waters and you go without a fight.

You wake the next morning to a sleety drizzle and manage to produce a faint feeling of satisfaction that your den is high enough that the water doesn’t come in. The pounding chatter of the rain in the mud is soothing. You sit at the entrance to the den for a while and, wrapped in your favourite blanket, watch rivulets of water snake their way down the junkpiles. The sky is low and grey and uniform in every way. You feel as though he’ll be back any minute, that he’s gone out hunting like the idiot he is and’ll show up bedraggled and sodden, holding breakfast by the tail with a dumb grin. The picture blooms clear in your mind, and you shut your eyes in an effort to preserve it. When you open them, your vision is blurred. You pretend it’s the rain.

When the rain eases up some, you take a couple of blankets and cans of fish and creep down the path until you spot a suitable crevice between a mildewed dresser and a fridge missing its door. You’d taken one look at the horrible mess you’d made of your den and decided to find somewhere else to spend a few days. It’s not a large gap behind them, but it’s big enough for you to sit without hunching and to lay curled up. It’s better than trying to clean up and dealing with everything, better than lying among the wreckage of your life, better than sitting and waiting for your friends to come with eyes full of pity.  
You’ve never been strong. You know that. Not everyone can be. But it never mattered when you had him to be strong for you. He was everything you weren’t, and you were everything he wasn’t. You fit together, complemented each other, balanced out other out.  
You wonder what happened to his memories. The things that made him who he was- sure, you share a lot of them, and those you’ll guard with your life, but the things he did alone. What memories did he hold close, things too private to share even with you? Where did those moments go? Dust on the wind, you suppose. They’ll rot with his body and feed the worms, feed the rats.  
You’re sure you can still feel dirt under your claws from burying him. This you tried to do alone, breaking Tribe tradition. They gave up trying to help after a few minutes of your snarls and left you with him. But three hours later, when despite your hardest efforts the hole wasn’t even halfway big enough, Tugger and Alonzo joined you without a word and helped you finish the job. When it came time to actually put him in, you went numb, legs shaking. You watched as they did it instead, making yourself focus less on the vivid red spattering his stomach and more on the furrow his tail made in the dust as they carried him and lowered him in gently.   
As they filled the hole in, you stared hard at his face, trying to memorise the beloved features of it and flinching with every clod of dirt pushed in. Then he was covered, lost to the soil, and you turned and walked home.  
Thinking about it makes your stomach turn. You take a long, slow breath, watching the rain and picturing the water soaking into the ground, cleansing the earth and washing his pain away.

For days you stay in the makeshift den, spending hour upon hour staring bleakly at the grey world you inhabit. Nobody passes by. You suppose they must’ve checked your den, seen the state of it. Do they think you’ve gone? Or do they know you’re here, trying to keep some claim on your dignity. You imagine they’ll visit soon. They won’t trust you alone with yourself.   
With difficulty, you try to think back to the last time something like this happened, the last time two Jellicles died. It was Sillabub and George, wasn’t it, so long ago when you were new and scared and utterly unsure? Macavity that time too. You remember the feeling of your claws tearing into his body, the hot burst of his blood under your teeth, and for a moment a bitter satisfaction for avenging their deaths sweeps through you. You just wish you could’ve saved Pouncival too, this time, and of course you wish you could have saved him.  
You wonder how Admetus is going. The loss of two brothers to the Hidden Paw must be breaking him. If you had any strength to spare you’d find him, comfort him. You know how it feels to lose a brother. But he has others there for him- his parents, his mate, the friends he’s grown up with, his family. You’re bitterly reminded that you have nothing.  
Then there’s Tugger and Munkstrap and Old Deuteronomy- are they grieving? You can’t imagine what’s going through their heads. Macavity was their brother and son, their kin, but he was evil and he hurt them and everyone they loved. You don’t know what you’d do in a situation like that. You hope they’re at least relieved his reign of terror is over after so many awful things have happened.  
With a sigh, you shift position in the cramped space, drawing your blanket closer around you. You miss him more than words can say, miss his warmth beside you and his breath tickling your ear as he whispers your shared secrets and his fingers laced perfectly with yours and his eyes, soft and blue as the sky and his voice and his smile and the way he curls his tail and twitches his ears and every damn thing about him and it’s so cruel you’ll never get him back. You’d give anything and everything just to be able to have him here for a few moments, just to say goodbye and hear him say “I love you” one more time and give him a hug and have him reassure you he’ll miss you just as much as you miss him. But you’re not getting that. Instead you get his stale scent on a blanket, fading already, and the chill of the empty space around you that seeps to your bones. 

You suppose that'll have to be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> hee heeee
> 
> so this is uh referencing some events from a roleplay i did with my bud india! my roleplaying blog is at the url rvmpleteazer and hers is admetvs.


End file.
